taxes

The Congressional Budget Office just released a new report, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2015 to 2025 Report (January 26, 2015). In an article at the New York Times titled "Budget Forecast Sees End to Sharp Deficit Declines", they referenced the report, and then quotes Senator Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyoming), the new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee: “The past will catch up to us no matter how fast we run from it."

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, proposed a plan to tax Wall Street financial transactions and raise taxes on the top 1 percent of earners ——> to pay for a “paycheck bonus credit” of $2,000 a year for couples earning less than $200,000.

We've heard it so many times before: Tax reform. When the Democrats say it, it usually means raising taxes (mostly on the rich). When the Republicans say it, it almost always means cutting taxes (mostly for the rich).

Here's Charles Krauthammer (the Fox News pundit) writing for the Washington Post -- "Some in Congress are talking about a 10- or 20-cent hike in the federal tax [on a gallon of gasoline] to use for infrastructure spending. Right idea, wrong policy. The hike should not be 10 cents but $1. And the proceeds should not be spent by, or even entrusted to, the government.

Everybody is picking on the multi-billionaires. The beggars (aka "the takers") are always holding out their hand and constantly demanding more — a living wage or a minimum wage, healthcare insurance, paid sick days, vacation days, safety regulations, equal pay for women, pension contributions ... the list goes on and on. When will it ever stop? And can multi-billionaires even afford these unreasonable demands without tanking the entire economy?

Did you know the United States has the worst income inequality of any industrialized nation? So says the OECD in this study. Globally, income inequality has increased more from 2007 to 2010 than during the twelve years previous and America is sure enough #1.

Past the final hour the House finally passed a bill to avert the fiscal cliff. The Senate had passed the legislation in the wee hours of New Years Day and after much brew ha-ha the House allowed an up and down vote on the Senate bill. We have listened to months and months of squabbling, bringing the economy to the brink over a very simple final result that could have been passed months ago.